Footprints in the Sand
by la chiede il tuo cor
Summary: Sands after the movie. Being forced to run blindly for one's life is never in a person's master plan. Rating for language.
1. Critical Acclaim

Hey. I'm not that clever with disclaimers, so I'm just going to out and admit that none of these characters belong to me, etc. etc. Please r/r. Enjoy!

* * *

"Will you be okay?"

Sands bit back a highly sarcastic response- '_you see, kid, when one finds five brand-spanking-new holes embedded in their person, their natural instinct is to openly and loudly express the fact that they are most assuredly NOT okay'_- and muttered a soft "I don't know" under his breath.

"You will be."

Had Sands had eyes, they would have been rolling visibly at this point. However- tragedy of tragedies- there was nothing there to roll. Sands had to be content with nodding his head and slipping a little further down the wall.

He did not know, in all honesty, how close he was to death. For all he knew, he could be dead within the hour- who knew what Guevara had given him? Then again, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't die of blood loss, no matter how attractive the concept was at the moment. Neither of the leg wounds were bleeding terribly copiously, and he could tell that the bullets hadn't come anywhere near the bone. The arm wouldn't even require surgery, in all likelihood.

With a faint noise of distaste, he realized that he had, in fact, been avoiding his biggest problem. _'Physically, that is.'_

Turning away from where the kid still stood, he removed his right glove- quickly, before he could change his mind. He had undoubtedly been given a powerful painkiller, and it- whatever _it_ was- was wearing off. Fast.

He roughly probed both sides of his face. Curtains of a wet, sticky substance dripped down his cheeks and neck, pooling at the hollow in his throat. Solid bits of matter were interspersed with said fluid, and Sands couldn't help but cringe inwardly as he felt them. _'Stop this. Show's over; it's time to face the critics.'_ With his left hand, he lifted his sunglasses a slight amount and let his probing right index finger approach the now-empty socket.

"Shit!"

Explosive pain emanated from the small contact point at the edge of his right socket. '_Hell, that's not a socket. Cavernous hole, maybe…_' Morbidly, Sands continued his exploration. '_They took my fucking eyelids. Well, we know he's thorough.'_ He replaced the glasses; there was no need to explore the left side… Already, Sands knew what he would find.

_'I wonder where El is… I need that phone back. Never before have I lost so much Company equipment in one sitting… Pilfered, maybe…'_ Briefly, Sands thought back to their first phone conversation.

_"Are you still standing?"_

_"Still."_

Which was really more than he could say for himself at the moment. _"Are you still standing, Sands?"_

_'Why, yes. With the aid of this wall.'_

Damn. He had never finished that book- the one that he had dragged along to the church, expecting a nice long time to read while El fought his way out. It hadn't taken El as long has he had expected; Sands had only been about twenty pages in when he had seen the cartel stationed outside the church scatter. Oh, well. He had never liked Judy Garland _that_ much to begin with.

Enough.

He pulled Ramirez's phone from his vest pocket, somehow managing to slide further down the wall in the process. His left arm was beginning to stiffen, and the legs of his pants were beginning to feel uncomfortably tight. _Shit._

"Senior?"

"I can dial a phone by myself. Thanks," Sands added cuttingly.

The show _was_ over. And he'd either have to face the critics or the God-forsaken cane waiting to drag him off before the final curtain call…

He'd take his chance with the critics.


	2. From Bad to Worse

He rolled over. She was there, clutching to his left bicep with one hand and trailing the other over his hip. He gave her one of his half-and-obligatory smiles: a quick thinning of the lips, on and off like a light switch. Her bronzed skin caught the early-morning light as her hand trailed upwards over his well-chiseled chest, her fingers ghosting lightly over his neck to find his face…

"You really didn't see it coming, did you?"

And her long fingernails plunged into his eyes.

* * *

Panting slightly he sat up, his hands flying involuntarily to his eye sockets only to be stopped by the scratchy gauze bandage that sat in their place. Biting down hard on his tongue, Sands forced himself back into a reclining position, schooling his breathing back into a semblance of normalcy. 

It had been twenty-eight days. Four weeks trapped in a hospital room at Langley. The bullet wounds- while still tender- were mostly healed.

_What the fuck am I doing here still?_

Inwardly, Sands knew. He had been debriefed here in the hospital room while he still been too weak to wreak any real havoc, but how he was more himself, and a psych evaluation was beginning to loom in the near future.

In the interim, however, he was quite welcome to amuse himself by making the white coats run like little lab rats on a wheel. _Wearing lab coats, of course_. Sands smirked lightly and reached for the buzzer that would summon a nurse to his aid. However, before his thumb touched the button a knock sounded on his door.

_Telepathic service, is it? Very nice._ He quickly dropped back and feigned sleep.

"Officer Sands?" A light, flutelike voice- one that he knew as one of the nurses- floated in the door.

He raised his head slightly. "Hmm?"

"Officer Sands, you have a visitor."

"Oh, gosh. Who is it?"

A different voice- male and extremely patronizing- spoke. "Officer Sands, my name is Officer Samuel Winston, but you're free to call me Sam if you prefer." Sands suppressed a smirk.

_Yes, I really **am** that easy to butter up. Tell me your first name, and we'll be best friends!_ "Well, whoop-de-doo on a pogo stick." He heard the nurse snort and shut the door as she left. Winston sat at the edge of the bed and patted Sands' knee through the bedclothes. Sands sat frozen, momentarily caught between laughter and homicide.

"So, Sheldon. If you don't mind…" _Does this man have a death wish? _Clearly, nobody had warned him about Sands. "…I'd like to ask you a few questions about your operation in Culiacan, and about some of the information given in your debriefing."

_What the hell?_ Granted, Sands hadn't been _entirely_ truthful during the debriefing, choosing to eliminate certain details of his operation regarding bullfights and a certain twenty million pesos (among other things), but he had been reasonably truthful- certainly truthful enough for the circumstances.

"We have become aware of certain papers of a rather sensitive nature that you failed to bring to the Company's attention during your debriefing. I trust that you know to which I am referring?" Winston's voice dropped its paternal warmth as quickly as an extinguishing candle. The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

"Well, Sammy Churchill, I can't say that I do."

Winston stood, and Sands could hear the clasps of a briefcase unfastening. The distinct sound of papers rustling came towards him. "Sands, be aware that these are only copies. The originals aren't here." The papers were placed in Sands' lap.

"I suppose that I should use my handy-dandy reading software that has been installed in my thumb to identify these, shall I?"

Winston snapped in his direction. "You know very well what these are. These are the papers that were signed by both you and one General Marquez-"

_"What?"_

"- in which you offered your assistance to him in assassinating the President in exchange for…" Winston flipped a page over noisily. "…five million pesos."

_I might be crazy, but I'd never do something like that for five million pesos. Something like that would cost ten at the very least…_

Sands sent a half-smile at him. _I've been set up. Somebody in the Company, or Barillo, or Cucuy… _"Tell me… What signature did I affix to these documents of yours?"

Winston snorted. "Buying for time, are you?"

"How did I sign my name?"

"With a pen, I assume." _The saddest part is that I don't think that he was even slightly sarcastic._

"No. Was it just _Sands,_ or was it _Jeffery Sands,_ or…"

There was a slight pause. "Sheldon Sands," Winston muttered.

_Well, I know it wasn't me, then. _And that was true. Sands had never signed the name _Sheldon Sands_ to a document; he either signed _S. Jeffery Sands_ or _S. J. Sands_. But never Sheldon. "Well, that is truly unbelievable."_ Unbelievable as it is, the shit has officially hit the fan. I need an out. Now._

"Be that as it may, you're under arrest for perjury."

Sands snorted. "Just perjury?"

He could hear the smile in Winston's voice as the door to the room opened. "For the time being, but there _will_ be more."

Sands could hear two sets of footsteps enter the room; the door closed again. _Wow. They must think that I'm _really_ wounded; only two cops for the infamous Officer Sands?_ He smirked. _Well, then. Thank you for giving me my out._

"Officer Sands, you are under arrest for perjury."

"Oh, really?"

The cop either hadn't heard him or chose to ignore him. "Place your hands behind your back." Sands could hear the metallic _snick_ of handcuffs being opened. "You have the right to remain-"

"I know my rights. Thank you. And I can't place my hands behind my back; I was shot in the arm."

Winston crossed the room and whispered in what he must have thought to be an inaudible voice to the cop. "He's blind and injured. You can take him in like this; he won't be any trouble for you."

_Ladies and gentlemen, the theatre doors are wide open._

The cop crossed over to Sands' bed and grabbed him roughly by the arm. Sands pretended to wince. "Come on, then. We're taking you in. If you make so much as one wrong move, we'll shoot you." _Clearly, they're not thinking perjury. More along the lines of treason. Shit._

"Well, then. We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen." Sands' hand flashed out for the cop's gun, and within ten seconds, Sands was the only living person in the room.

_Okay. Let's go._

Sands strode briskly as he dared across the room, still holding the gun. His hand was on the doorknob before he realized that he still resembled a mummy in a backless hospital gown. _Yeah, I'm ready to Defy Gravity._

Fifteen minutes later, Sands was dressed in Winston's clothing with both Cop Number One and Cop Number Two's guns hanging from his new (if slightly large; neither Cop Number One or Cop Number Two was a real pixie) gunbelts which crisscrossed his hips. Cop Number Two had sported extremely large aviator sunglasses which were now hiding the ruins of what had once been his eyes. Even better, he was seated in the back of a cab en route to the airport, his CIA badge in his pocket.

If his luck held out, he would be able to make it all the way to Mexico without anybody being any the wiser.

And from there?

He wasn't really sure. But one thing was certain; the Company was _not_ going to take his freedom from him. If he had to run to ensure that fact, he would run.


	3. Starting the Trail

Thanks for the reviews! You guys rock my socks. Hmm... Do you want to know something interesting? This story has three reviews... But fanfiction allows you to see how many hits your story has. This one has had seventy. Meaning that quite a few people are reading it and most definately not reviewing. Interesting. Enjoy!

* * *

It had been twenty-nine days since the failed Coup, and El Mariachi was on the run. The Barillo cartel had regrouped under new leadership, and the new leader wasn't- as Salome had put it- El's biggest fan. _Let's face it_.

El was- to the best of what he had heard- the cartel's highest priority at the moment; only slightly higher than the anonymous gunfighter that had killed the cartel's chief informant and alleged second-in-command-- Barillo's own daughter, or so El had heard.

At the moment, El was reclining in the passenger seat of Jorge Ramirez's rather messy car. Glancing at Ramirez, El concluded that killing Guevara and taking a few shots at Barillo had come at a great cost- Ramirez's house had been blown to pieces within an hour of Barillo's death.

It seemed that Ramirez was unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of a hunt: he was gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly to be entirely comfortable.

"Jorge."

Ramirez grunted in response.

"Would you like for me to drive for a few hours?"

Ramirez shrugged. "I suppose that depends on where you intend to drive."

El tilted his head back in a mixture of exasperation and confusion. "They're not going to stop hunting us."

"I know."

"They're going to try the Coup again, you know."

"Yes."

"No one will be there to stop it."

"I know."

"And you're okay with that?"

Ramirez glanced into the rear-view mirror and, seeing no one, slammed heavily on the breaks while turning towards El. "What do you want from me?"

El wiped blood away from where his lip had impacted the dashboard. "The cartel will still be running its operations out of Culiacan."

"And you think we're going back there?"

El was silent.

* * *

One day south of the boarder was all that Sands needed to realize that "cartel" was simply another expression for the word "cockroach." _Or maybe one of those nifty little lizards who can regrow their tails."_

A little snooping around here and there- checking in with old informants and such- had told Sands what he most needed to know: the cartel was still very much in order and wanted him dead. _And they don't even know that it was me who shot Ajedrez. Pity, that; I could be quite the legend._

Of course, the cartel was as optimistic as a six-year-old who had just failed a test- _if at first you don't succeed; try, try again._ Another Coup was in the works- one that the CIA was clueless about. After all, Sands was one of only two Officers that had been stationed in Mexico (the majority of Clandestine Operations was stationed in the Middle East), and the other was a fuck-up who was responsible only for the southern-most region of the country. Other than that, Sands was alone. _Yeah, I'm just that good._

Sands had to wonder how long it would take the Company to send a few men after him. _Of course, it would never occur to them to check back with the cartel every-so-often. You know, chat over tea, have dinner, so on…_ And it wouldn't; that had been Sands' department.

_Turdburglers._

And speaking of turdburglers…

"Looking" over the steam rising from his latest plate of puerco pibil, he listened to the approaching footsteps.

In that other life- that life that had ended thirty days ago- Alveraz had been Sands' second resource: the place he went on the rare occation that Belini didn't have the answers. _Or was dead._

Sands couldn't help but notice that all of his senses- not only his hearing- had increased tenfold since the coup. He could feel the vibrations of Alveraz's footsteps through the floor- could smell and taste his atrocious cologne…

"What?" And the rasp of a voice. Unmistakable. Sands smiled.

"I have another assignment for you." Sands reached under the table and found (with minimal groping) the tin lunchbox that he had placed there earlier. He had studied it carefully with his fingertips before deciding that it bore a rather distasteful depiction of Scooby Doo. He extended it across the table; Alveraz's hand shot out and grabbed it forcefully. "Twenty thousand was your going rate, yes?" He could hear the box opening and closing.

"What do you need?"

Sands smirked. "A few things." He paused, listening hard. Hearing nothing. "I'd like for you to write this down. Your memory…" He trailed off, the smirk extending all the way to the realm of the 'gleeful smile'. He heard Alveraz grunt, rummage about, and grunt again. "Okay…" The smile faded. "What I'd like from you is the following… One, scope out the remains of the Barillo cartel. I want information pertaining to its new leadership and who they're hunting. Second. I'd like for you to have a look into the following names." He smirked again. "Would you like for me to spell them for you, or do you think that you can handle yourself?"

"Fuck you."

"Later. AFN Ajedrez tops the list. She was shot- possibly fatally- but it's good to know for certain where your enemies lie. You could look for the name 'Ajedrez Barillo'- I'm pretty certain that was her real name. Next, have a look around to see if Cucuy is really and truly dead."

"Cucuy? Your informant? Dead?" Sands could tell from Alveraz's voice alone that the expression written on his face rivaled that of a basset hound that needed to be put out. "You killed him?"

"Well," Sands drawled, lighting a cigarette gingerly as to avoid burning his fingertips, "if I were the one who killed him, I would know if he was alive, wouldn't I?" He took a deep draw and exhaled through his nostrils. "The truth of it all is that he double-crossed me, and that I have plenty of reason to believe that he's lying in a ditch or two somewhere. Which should be," he said, the drawl dropping as quickly as it had appeared, "a very good lesson for us all."

"Whatever."

"I'm glad to see that you understand. Last name, now. Ready? FBI Special Agent Jorge Ramirez. Retired, of course. _That_ one is particularly important. I want to know where he is, what he's doing, who he's with… You get my drift?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"Is that it?" The chair's legs scooted out, making a highly unpleasant noise as they scraped the ground.

"Sit down- did I say that I was finished? One last thing." The chair was jammed forward again. "Wow. You weren't kidding when you asked for a fuck, were you? You're all-too-anxious." Silence. "Hmm… Okay. I want you to go to Culiacan. Find a little boy- he rides a bike, sells bubblegum, is about nine years old, is very persistent regarding his sales, and is overall an extremely obnoxious person to deal with. Now. You'll likely find about ten kids who match this description, but you're looking for one with knowledge about a blind gunfighter. Savvy?"

There was a pause as Alveraz scribbled something down. Then- "I've heard rumors… A blind gunfighter. _The_ Blind Gunfighter. You know him?"

Sands allowed his mouth to curve upwards. _My reputation precedes me._ "We've met."

"What do you want with the boy?"

"Just… Find him. The rest is for me to know… And for you never to find out."


End file.
